Full blooded Aboriginals were expected to ‘die out’ and therefore were not targeted for assimilation policies (Manne: 1999, cited in SMH: 1999, 4s, Spectrum, Feb 27, p. 27). Manne also states from the time the Commonwealth took over management of the Northern Territory from South Australia, the rounding up of the ‘half-castes’ began. Manne states: “The policy appears to have been the brain child of the first Commonwealth Chief Protector of Aborigines, Dr. Herbert Basedow”. A Commonwealth policy carried out and enforced by State authorities. He also states that at the heart of so called ‘child rescuing’ was “an astonishing indifference to two fundamental human needs – the bond of the child to its mother and the rootedness of individual identity in a culture”. Murdoch[1] stated that is exactly what the British reformers failed to acknowledge: the suffering they inflicted on poor parents and single mothers when they took their children away, many thousands sent overseas, losing not only their families, but cultural identity.[2] The same could be said about those who failed to acknowledge the acute suffering and trauma they inflicted on single mothers in taking their newborns away at birth or soon after, in 20th century Australia[3] (Cunningham: 1996, p. 21; Mather: 1978, p.109; Harper[4]: 1978, p. 112; Rickarby: 1998, pp. 68-69; Roberts[5]: 1973, p. 97).
The Aboriginal Board did not have the power to remove Aboriginal children from their families (Trevorow v State of South Australia: 2007). All ‘part- Aboriginal’ mothers or white mothers’ with Aboriginal children were treated in the same manner within hospitals and mother and baby Homes. Ms Wendy Hermeston states: “The ways of removal graduated over time. They went from covert to overt … pressure was placed on women … the pillow held up … the mother not being able to see the child to cut off those emotional bonds … it graduated over time, the actual forced removal where superintendents police or the mission manger went into the missions and removed children … [adoptions] came into play over the 1950s and 1960s … welfare workers, doctors, anybody within the system, basically is the same. Aboriginal women were dealing with the same workers that non-Aboriginal women were dealing with … we’re talking about adoption … so the same people non-Aboriginal people dealt with in the system… I definitely consider it unethical …Yes, I do think it was illegal (Report 22: 2000, pp. 228-229).
The newborns were removed ostensibly under either Child Welfare or Adoption Acts, and Indigenous mothers like their white counterparts were forced to sign consents. Fortunately their plight has been recognized and they have been apologised to, they make up 17% of the Aboriginal stolen generation (Cheater: 2009, p. 178)[6].
According to Cameron Raynes, when researching archival material for his PhD, in South Australia, he came across correspondence of William Penhall, the last Chief Protector of Aborigines in South Australia (1939-1953). According to Raynes (2005) Penhall colluded with authorities at Umeewarra, Koonibba and Gerard missions, and with the Colebrook Home, to systematically deny Aboriginal parents the right to raise their own children. In 1951, Penhall wrote: “The Aborigines Protection Board has NO power or authority to remove children from their mothers, and in fact has never done so. Whenever children of aboriginal descent in South Australia are neglected or ill-treated, action is always taken by the Children’s Welfare Department in the same way as that department deals with neglected white children. A number of children are placed in special institutions by the Board for training, but this is only done with the consent of the parents”.
Raynes stated: “Under the Aborigines Act 1939, the Aborigine Protection Board (APB) of which Penhall was secretary, was the legal guardian of all Aboriginal children under 21. Specific provisions of the Act related to the custody of Aboriginal children under which the board could arrange for the direct transfer of control for a child from its guardianship to the Children’s Welfare and Public Relief Board (CWPRB). Alternatively, the APB could refer a case to the CWPRB, to use its general procedure – as used for the white population – to commit a child to an institution against the wishes of its parents … Penhall asked for advice from the Crown Solicitor (1949) as to whether he could use parts of the Act, other than that allowing a transfer of control from his Board to the CWPRB to remove Aboriginal children form their parents. Hannan, the Crown Solicitor, suggested that certain sections in the Act could be used in tandem to confine any Aboriginal child or otherwise to a reserve or Aboriginal institution. But he added: ‘I do not think the Board has any powers in the matter’”.
In fact removing children constituted a violation of his Board’s role. Under section 7(g) of the Act, the Board had a duty ‘to exercise a general supervision and care over all matters affecting the welfare of the aborigines, and to protect them against injustice, imposition and fraud’. “It is clear that the Koonibba Mission and UAM (United Aborigines Mission) benefited financially from their illegal holding of Aboriginal children”. The Homes received a departmental subsidy and child endowment for each child in their home. Additionally the UAM kept 80% of the wages of their inmates when they were sent out to work. The justification used for illegally taking Aboriginal children from their mothers, Penhall, a Methodist preacher explained, “this method of dealing with the aboriginal race offers the best prospect of success. So long as the children continue to grow up in the old environment there won’t be any radical change in the character of the people.” Penhall like his colleagues in the CWPRB never admitted their part in stealing children, either black or white. This according to Raynes: “effectively quarantined the SA public from this aspect of the public service” (Raynes: 2006, The Adelaide Review, March 18, pp. 8-9).
There are many parallels between White Australian mothers who had their baby stolen for adoption and Indigenous mothers.
To quote Sir Charles McKellar white and Aboriginal mothers were considered part of the same sub-group: “racially inferior whites”.[i] Therefore deemed ‘unfit’ to rear their infants. When discussing the Infant Mortality Bill (Later the Infant Mortality Act (NSW) 1904), Mackellar discussed the high mortality rate of ‘illegitimately’ born infants and blamed it on the neglect of their mothers. He proclaimed: “The Bill aims at placing the State Children Relief Board in loco parentis to any mother who bears an illegitimate child”[ii]. The way Australia solved the problem of this “inferior” class was to remove their children and assimilate them amongst the ‘industrious’ classes’,[iii] or as the government perceived it: a ‘class above their own’.[iv]
According to Shurlee Swain, Indigenous adoptees have been marginalized both in the story of the Stolen Generations and in the history of adoption in Australia.[v] Adults who had been adopted as children made up 35.5% of the witnesses who gave evidence before the Bringing Them Home Inquiry.[vi] Christine Cheater states that nearly 17% of the stolen generation were adopted and that adoption “exemplifies the worst excesses of the forced separation of Aboriginal children from their families…to this very day [many] may not be aware of their Aboriginal identity.[vii] Link-up, the Aboriginal organisation used to facilitate reunions estimates there is “100,000 Australians unaware of the their Indigeneity because they are the descendants of children removed and brought up in the non-Indigenous community.”[viii]
A social worker I interviewed for my research stated that she had never got over the guilt of having to ‘railroad’ a Indigenous mother of 24 into adoption, when she trained at Crown St Women’s Hospital. She was told during her training that she had to shame mothers into feeling disentitled to their babies, because it was better for the babies if they were adopted. It was not about what the mothers wanted. It was not whether the mother was Indigenous or not, it was because the mother was unwed. It was the practice in the hospital to systematically remove the babies from single mothers if they were without support.
Prime Minister Rudd repeated in his apology the need for practices such as the forced removal of children from their families never to be repeated again, but if he demarcates the practice by race and does not acknowledge that it also happened to non-Indigenous mothers and if he does not take into consideration the fact that any group that is marginalised and dehumanised can be exploited by those more powerful who need something they have, then the barbaric practices of the past will be repeated. The people who worked within the adoption industry did not remove babies based on race, they took them because there was a demand by infertile couples to be provided with babies. And the removal of the babies was justified because unwed mothers, as a group, were dehumanised and infertile couples, who were in the more powerful position, were deemed more worthy to parent their babies. The system got away with its barbaric practices for decades because it was not subject to any accountability and there was no transparency and the removal of babies satisfied a demand. Mothers had their babies taken by coercive means up until at least 1982 – when the Health Commission sent around a circular informing medical and social work staff that they were breaking the law by not allowing mothers their right to access their infants. And mothers themselves were silenced because those in more powerful positions told us that we should go home and forget about what happened, then when we continued to grieve for our stolen children we were ridiculed and then later dismissed by those in authority who now state: “Oh, white mothers had a choice. They ‘chose adoption”.
I believe the matter of whether or not Indigenous mothers who went through the same experience as non-Indigenous mothers, whilst subject to the same laws and practices within the hospital were apologised to is a very important political point. Therefore I emailed the Minister for Indigenous Affairs: Jenny Macklin and Link- Up on Monday, 11 February, to gain clarification on this point. I wrote:
“Hi Ms Macklin,
I would like to know whether the apology this Wednesday is inclusive of Indigenous mothers who had their babies forcibly taken from them in hospitals immediately after birth and who were required to sign ‘consent to adopt’ forms before being allowed to leave hospital? Is the apology inclusive of Indigenous children forcibly taken from their non-Indigenous mothers at birth? Ms Wendy Hermeston, former worker with Link-Up, gave evidence at the NSW Upper House Inquiry into Past Adoption Practices, described how mothers had pillows or sheets placed in front of them so they could not see their babies at the birth and of the other coercive practices used to deprive these mothers of their babies. And how when some of these mothers tried to revoke their coerced consent within the 30 day period they were told their baby had died, only to have their adult child find them years later.
In 1969 the NSW Aborigines Act abolished the Aboriginal Welfare board and repealed the Aboriginal Protection Acts and Indigenous mothers were subject to the same relevant Child Welfare Acts as non-Indigenous mothers”.[ix]
Kind regards
Christine Cole
So far I have not received a response. I did however ring Ms Macklin’s office on the 14 February, and was told by the person who was in charge of fielding questions relating to the apology, Mary-Ellen, that:
“Indigenous mothers who had their babies taken from hospitals, after 1969, would be included in the apology”.
Excerpts from the 1997 Bringing Them Home Report
The 1940 Act did not give the new Board the same administrative removal powers. To remove a child the Board now had to proceed under the Child Welfare Act 1939 and establish to the satisfaction of a Children’s Court that the child was `neglected’ or `uncontrollable’.[7]
In theory at least the court process in the Child Welfare Act 1939 provided safeguards against the kinds of discretionary separations that the Board had previously engaged in.[8]
From 1943 Aboriginal children deemed `uncontrollable’ by the Children’s Court became the responsibility of the Child Welfare Department. They were usually sent to a State Corrective Institution such as Parramatta Girls’ Home or Mt Penang.
During the 1940s and 1950s the Aborigines’ Welfare Board and the Child Welfare Department worked closely together to place Indigenous children.
The powers of the NSW Board differed from those in some other States in that it never had guardianship of Indigenous children and therefore could not consent to the adoption of one of its wards. However the Adoption of Children Act 1965 allowed for the consent requirement to be waived if `that person is, in the opinion of the Court, unfit to discharge the obligations of a parent or guardian by reason of his having abandoned, deserted, neglected or ill-treated the child’. Rather than endeavour to contact the mother of a child whose foster parents wanted to adopt him or her, the Board applied to the Children’s Court to waive the consent requirement.[9]
Most of us went to Crown St. Hospital. That’s where my son was born, and then we went back to the hostel with the baby. Once we were there, we had the Welfare coming in, asking you what you was going to do – telling you most of the time that your parents didn’t want you, the father of the baby didn’t want you … they said to me they couldn’t find anyone that wanted me, and they couldn’t find anywhere for me, like a live-in job where I could take the baby. And then they said the only one they could find that was willing to take me was my eldest sister, who I’d never seen since I was a little girl – she’d gone before us: she went away with some white people that were supposed to take her away for a good education – and they said she was the only one who was willing to take me, but she didn’t want the baby. So they brought the papers in and told me to sign and that was it.
Confidential evidence 689, New South Wales: woman removed in the 1960s and placed in Parramatta Girl’s Home[10].
From 1951 in WA Aboriginal children were more likely to be removed under the Child Welfare Act 1947 by the Child Welfare Department than by the Department of Native Welfare acting under the 1936 Act.[11]
In 1958 the Special Committee on Native Matters warned that `removal of a child from his mother at an early age can cause serious psychological and mental disturbances’. This warning was ignored (WA Government submission page 26).[12]
[1] Murdoch, L. (1970). Imagined Orphans: Poor Families, Child Welfare, and Contested Citizenship in London. New Brunswick, New Jersey and London: Rutgers University Press.
[2] Eekelaar, J. (1994). ‘The Chief Glory’: The Export of Children from the United Kingdom, Journal of Law and Society, 21(4), Dec, pp. 487-504
[3] Cunningham, A. (1996). Background Paper for the Minister of Community and Health Service On Issues relating to Historical Adoption Practices in Tasmania, 4 December
[4] Mather, V. (1978). ‘The Rights of Relinquishing Parents’ in Proceedings of the Second Australian Conference on Adoption, Cliff Picton (Ed.), Melbourne: The Committee of the Second Australian Conference on Adoption; Harper (1978) in Proceedings of the Second Australian Conference on Adoption, Cliff Picton (Ed.), Melbourne: The Committee of the Second Australian Conference on Adoption
[5] Roberts, P. (1973). ‘The Gaps and How We Might Fill Them’ Clive Picton (ed.) in Proceedings of Second Australian Conference on Adoption: Current Concerns and Alternatives for Child Placement and Parenting, Melbourne; The Committee of the Second Australian Conference on Adoption.
[6] Cheater, C. (2009). ‘My brown skin baby they take him away, In Ceridwen Spark & Denise Cuthbert (Ed.), Other People’s Children, Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing.
[7] https://humanrights.gov.au/our-work/bringing-them-home-chapter-3
[8] ibid
[9] ibid
[10] ibid
[11] https://humanrights.gov.au/our-work/projects/bringing-them-home-chapter-7
[12] ibid
[i] Mackellar: 1913, pp. 86, 91; NSW SCRD: 1904, p. 24 cited in Cole: Stolen Babies Broken Hearts, Vol 1, Doctoral Thesis, Western Sydney University, 2013, at p. 43
[ii] Ibid at p. 43 NSW SCRB: 1904, p. 24.
[iii] Ibid at p. 43 NSW SCRD: 1902, p. 24, 1904, pp. 18, 24; NSW CWD: 1925, p. 5; Reekie: 1998, pp. 74-75
[iv] Ibid at p. 43 NSW SCRD: 1883, p. 4; 1894, p. 1, 1902, p. 24, 1904, pp. 18, 24; 1908, p. 19; NSW CWD: 1925, p. 5; Garton: 2008, 2012, p. 254
[v] Swain, Shurlee. ‘Homes Are Sought for These Children Locating Adoption within the Australian Stolen Generations Narrative’ American Indian Quarterly
[vi] ibid
[vii] Cheater, C. (2009). ‘My brown skin baby they take him away’, in Other People’s Children: Adoption in Australia, Ceridwen Spark & Denise Cuthbert (Eds) pp.176-193, at p. 193
[viii] Swaine, ibid
[ix] https://humanrights.gov.au/our-work/bringing-them-home-chapter-3
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